I always say I like it when you smile.I like your smile.Your laugh, I like that it gives me goose bumps.And you laugh.Sad songs remind me of youAnd I smile.Words like dark and nothing and pretend.Like black, loss, death, and the end.And it’s been raining so hard lately.I fear you’ll be taken away by a river ofdirty water, concrete, grass and dirt.Tossing, tumbling with bodies differentfrom your own touching and bumping,rotating and swirling and you’ll all utterniceties: “I’m sorry, oh, excuse me…”Cars and bicycles, and stuff leftover fromthe yard sale next door.And I’ll absorb all the moisture regurgitatedby the plant-life in the front yard.Like a sponge.Heavy, dripping, and soon I’ll mold, spoil,and smell – miserable and alone.Daydreaming, imagining, fearing.Life.I always say I love your hands on me.Touching me, my legs, my arms, my face.Feeling the millions of tiny grooves in your fingertipsslide over every imperfection.Perfection.You make me feel warm and satisfiedI like pressing down on your veins withmy index fingers, like buttonsReleasing and expanding againAlways waking up late Sunday morningsThe sunshine through the windowpaneswarming our feet. Your hot breath on my neckI wasn’t ready, light came too fast.Never ready, waiting for the gun-blast.There are parts of me like metal.Machine, like you.Sharp edges of our bones always 2 secondsaway from piercing through our fleshLeaving us with scratchestoo many too count, not like ceiling tiles.“They’re nice decoration…” you’ll say.I’ll laugh. And you laugh.But I think we’re really screamingand fighting and crying inside our heads.because everything’s changing,changing too fast.And before we realize we’ve taken the shapeof something newYou know, growing accustomed to ourselves,to each other,we’re changing again.I always say I like it when you smile.I like your smile.But it’s not enough to keep you afloatwhen the rain comes,when the change comes.

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If someone had asked me 10 years ago if I would plan to take self-portraits should I ever get pregnant the answer would have likely been a resounding yes. To document such drastic changes in this vessel I inhabit and be able to add that to my body of work, which was then and still occupied by so many beautiful and various female bodies I've photographed over the years? Well, of course. Ten years later when prompted with that question by several someones, my answer wasn't so certain, maybe even doubtful.

When I became lost in the separation of child and mother, Of myself and the otherWhen I became lost you became foundYou climbed on to the backs of birds andsailed between land and space for milesYour back covered in feathers as black as the sky on a moonless nighteach freckle an understudy for the veiled stars

I met Melissa, this red-lipped, beautifully inked, raven-haired woman less than 6 months ago. One day, nearly two months ago she confessed her love to me for Banksy’s balloon girl. She said she was dying to recreate it in a photograph for someone special to her, but wanted a snowy-filled backdrop. She wanted that vibrant red heart balloon to pop off a clean white setting.

My husband and I recently participated in an Atlas Obscura event to get a peek inside the Wonder View Tower in Genoa, Colorado. I'd actually never heard of this place before a friend sent me a link for the AO tour event only days prior to the meet-up. Needless to say, I was hooked and immediately bought tickets.

"Looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker’s last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world."

“Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Familes are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.” ―Diane Setterfield

The trip was of course, wonderful, until the last 30 minutes of the drive home when Serenica's engine began stalling on us whenever we'd drop beneath a certain speed (hoping it's a minor fix!). Fortunately, after stalling out on several occasions and getting it restarted again, she died right inside our RV storage lot gate and wouldn't turn over.